Sunday, January 18, 2015

Q: Name two animals, both mammals, one of them domestic, the other wild. Put their letters together, and rearrange the result to name another mammal, this one wild, and not seen naturally around North America. What mammal is it?

111 comments:

Here's my standard reminder... don't post the answer or any hints that could lead directly to the answer (e.g. via a chain of thought, or an internet search) before the deadline of Thursday at 3pm ET. If you know the answer, click the link and submit it to NPR, but don't give it away here.

You may provide indirect hints to the answer to show you know it, but make sure they don't give the answer away. You can openly discuss your hints and the answer after the Thursday deadline. Thank you.

Chuck - Actually, I think I understand your clue and my reference was to a particular model of the brand of sports equipment you referred to. (Some clever Blainesville bloggers might observe that as the temperature rises, the sport in question becomes torture.)

I finally have an answer. It involves an animal I'd never heard of before. I'm convinced it works perfectly, but I'd be more certain it's the intended answer if more of these comments made sense to me. Only one does, which I find quite comical.

I'm thinking the domesticated animal is a "cat" and the wild animal is a "squash" (think of how many of them you see on a country road), with the resulting not naturally seen animal a "sasquatch", although some people might think it is only rarely seen.

skydiveboy,Mitch McConnell, at the moment, has his hands planted firmly beneath his sASSquatch! (TanMan's are under his fanny)

David,I'm thinking the domesticated animal is a "mad cow" and the wild animal is a "dead skunk" (think of how many of them you see on a country road), with the resulting not naturally seen animal a "weak-Dom sand duck", (which is related to the ostritch) although some people might think it is only rarely seen outside of Seattle… where, for example a few days ago, a Dom-inating defense which held it head high for three quarters finally ducked its head under the sand, proving itself to be a weak-Dom under-the-sand ducker in what used to be the Kingdome.

I had heard of this mammal, though it didn't spring to mind. Google was no help, but I found it scrolling through the index of a biological Dictionary. We do have a close relative of it "in" N. America, sort of. I was gonna submit "Girl+Lola=Gorilla".

Dog + gnu = Dugong, which is closely related to the Manatee. Thanks Enya_and_Weird_Al_fan, that's ONE of the reasons I'm so lousy with anagrams: I can't do simple math! "French gorilla ice cream", I've tasted that on a few dates! Kind of fishy, actually.

Last Sunday I said, “Got it and I feel good about it. When you get it you’ll feel good about it, too.” You’ll feel good as in you’ll feel OK. OK because according to the Wikipedia article bearcat can also be spelled bearKat.

Chuck,I can imagine that my response to your clue made no sense whatsoever. Having come up with the gnu answer, I read your post, was baffled and Googled “gnu feel good.” I discovered that Feelgood is a snowboard model and that B-Nice is a competing model manufactured by a company named GNU. My comment about the sport becoming torture as the temperature rises referred to waterboarding.

Thanks, I always like a good joke! I wanted people to think of a gong that rang - dugong. I got part of the answer from Jan's hing (dog), and somehow missed the "gnu" until I started looking through a list of Australian mammals. --Margaret G.

My obscure clue:"Whenever I hear the name of a late U.S. industrialist, financier, philanthropist and art collector, I am reminded of my answer to this puzzle."alluded to the American finacier J.P. Morgan, whose homophone is Jaye P. Morgan, a panelist on the 1970s so-bad-it's-so-so "Gong Show, with emcee Chuck Barris. GONG >>> DUGONG

The clue I didn't give because it was too much of a give-away would have involved the phrase BRACKISH CUR, which anagrams to CHUCK BARRIS, or "Salty Dog."

Wow, I was so out of it, besides being out with the flu. I tried to run with Tricks are for Kids and tried the Hare - y combos that would not work. Good thing I did not get it. I probably would have referenced the Chuck Berry song and been banned from the blog.

To Will’s NPR offering, it is indeed a nod. Or at least an odd coincidence. Even I, a lowly NYT non-Sunday-subscriber can discern some of Will's other clues in this "Twist Ending" crossword puzzle:

This often gets tangled up with laurel wreaths and needs to be cream-rinsed and conditioned? (12 letters)

“Not to beat a dead horse, but TV game show producers Mark Goodson and Bill Todman -- who put emcees like Mr. Martindale on the same pedestal with announcers like Mr. Pardo -- followed this credo?: “… (19 letters)

Next week's challenge from listener Ben Bass of Chicago: Name someone who welcomes you in. Insert the letter U somewhere inside this, and you'll name something that warns you to stay away. Who is this person, and what is this thing?

Just now I heard the re-broadcast at 10:40 AM (NPR never airs an hour just once!), and something came to me immediately, but I said, "No, that can't be!". Looked it up in the dictionary, and what do you know, it was.

None of this has anything to do with the fact that Ben Bass and I are BFFs. (translation - I've met him at a couple of ACPTs, shook his hand and talked with him. Nice guy.)